Hunters' reporting rate passes 80 percent

A flurry of hunters reported on their success, or lack thereof, in the 11th hour last week, pushing Oregon's mandatory-reporting rates over 80 percent for the second straight year since a $25 fine went into effect for non-reporting.

A flurry of hunters reported on their success, or lack thereof, in the 11th hour last week, pushing Oregon's mandatory-reporting rates over 80 percent for the second straight year since a $25 fine went into effect for non-reporting.

Oregon's deer and elk hunters inched their reporting rate to 81 percent before the Jan. 31 deadline, says Michelle Dennehy, Wildlife Division spokeswoman for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Two weeks before the deadline, the reporting rate had been hovering just over 50 percent, so the late surge again was evident, Dennehy says.

Last year, the inaugural year in which non-reporters had to pay $25 before getting their next hunting license, the reporting rate was 85 percent for elk hunters and 84 percent for deer hunters, Dennehy says.

The reason for the slip is not immediately understood, she says.

"It's too early to make any analysis of it," Dennehy says.

Those numbers, however, will creep up by April 15, which is the reporting deadline for hunters with deer and elk tags whose seasons slop into 2014, she says.

Along with deer- and elk-tag buyers, those who purchased cougar, bear, pronghorn and turkey tags had to report information about their hunt by the Jan. 31 deadline. The only exceptions are for Sports Pac license holders who do not need to report on tags that were never issued to them.

The information is used by biologists to set hunting numbers in limited-entry hunts, as well as to help improve the accuracy of computer-modeling population estimates.

A Jacksonville bass angler and his Beaverton partner representing the University of Oregon won a college bass-fishing tournament Saturday in California.

Jacob Wall, of Jacksonville, and teammate Kyle Schneider easily captured first place in the FLW College Fishing Western Conference tournament on Lake Havasu.

Their three bass weighed in at 12 pounds, 8 ounces, beating the second-place team from Chico State by nearly 3 pounds.

The pair won UO $2,000 and qualified the young men for the 2014 Western Conference Invitational on Clear Lake.

It was the first time the pair represented the Ducks in a tournament. Bass fishing is a club sport at UO.

The annual Chemult Sled Dog Races are the latest victim of the dearth of early-winter snowfall in Oregon.

After rescheduling January's race for next weekend, organizers have canceled that event and plan no new attempts at rescheduling.

It's the second time in three years that the season has been canceled due to a lack of snow. The event has been held for 20 years on the Fremont-Winema National Forest near Chemult.

A low January snowpack in 2012 led to the cancellation of the entire Oregon dog-mushing season. That year, the Chemult Sled Dog Races Association did not attempt to reschedule the races like they did this year, says race coordinator Erin Sutton.

The races feature six sled-dog races and two skijoring races over a two-day span.

Skijoring is the discipline of having a musher on cross-country skis get pulled by one or two sled dogs.

The races are centered around the forest's Walt Haring Sno-Park along Highway 97 about a quarter-mile north of Chemult, which is about halfway between Bend and Klamath Falls.

Mushers from as far away as Arizona, British Columbia and Michigan were scheduled to be at January's event.